


Other Fronts

by simplyprologue



Series: To All Things There is a Season [2]
Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Babies, F/M, Families of Choice, Gen, Morning Sickness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 10:58:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1938342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>MacKenzie versus morning sickness. The ever-faithful Jim does what he can. Cut scene from <i>A Time to Keep</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Other Fronts

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** Since JD has decided to troll us with a picture of a baby on the anchor desk, and Olivia Munn's tweet with the baby emoticon... 'tis the season? Obviously a cut scene from _A Time to Keep_ , taking place in early July 2013.

“Please don’t throw up again, I just finished getting vomit out of your hair.” It’s spoken as less of a demand and more of a somewhat fearful plea, as Jim clumsily works a brush through the ends of Mac’s locks.

She’s had a particularly hard run of it this week. Jim tries to do the math — asking Mac would mean she has to open her mouth, which means she’ll probably lose whatever little of her breakfast she has left — and thinks this is week nine or ten, so it can’t be all that much longer, right?

( _You start at four weeks, right? With the missed period? That’s four weeks?_ He googled it but Jim knows he’s notoriously bad with women, something Mac reminds him of often enough. He does the math again.

_Yeah, nine or ten weeks._

Jim has already decided he is never getting a woman pregnant ever.)

Maggie’s out in the bullpen running interference for them, and during the brief period where Mac could talk without immediately needing to hurl after finishing a sentence, they discussed the likelihood that Maggie has her figured out.

(Maggie definitely knows about the untitled McHale-McAvoy project.)

Examining the ends of her hair for flecks of vomit, he decided his job is done for now and sinks to the floor next to her, dropping the brush back into Mac’s purse. “I haven’t seen you this miserable since the stomach bug we all caught in KP with an eight hour ride in the Humvee to get through.”

Weakly, Mac laughs. “Having to choose a corner of the cave you’ll be living in for the next few days to throw up in was its own special hell, too.”

“When did Will say he’d be back?” He’d been dragged off to an affiliates meeting a little over an hour ago. Naturally, Mac’s nausea made a resurgence twenty minutes after Will was seen being towed to the 44th floor by Charlie amidst a slew of quiet protests. “Not that I mind. Staying with you, I mean.”

Mac snorts, flippantly waving her hand while leaning forward more over the bowl, resting her forehead on the seat.

“This is a good sign, right? Google said it was a good sign. Morning sickness means your hCG levels are high,” he says, acutely aware that he’s rambling. But Jim’s pretty sure he _has_ read that, somewhere in the flurry of Mayo Clinic articles he’s scanned in the past few weeks.

(After all, he’s Mac’s senior producer. He needs to be prepared.)

She moans, and it echoes against the porcelain. “Shut up.”

“Yup.”

He settles for the much safer option of rubbing circles into Mac’s back and running a towel under cold water to put on the back of her neck.

“Can I get you anything?” he asks.

She takes a deep, testing breath, exhaling through pursed lips. “The reports coming out of Egypt. Maggie said she’d just leave any new ones on my desk.”

Nodding, he ambles to his feet and quietly opens the door to Mac’s office, creeping out her bathroom. He takes a moment to make sure that the coast is clear of any staff, and then grabs the newest stack of stories on Morsi’s deposition and the military coup and quickly sneaks back into the bathroom — where Mac is back to throwing up, and attempting to hold back her own hair in one hand while bracing herself against the toilet with the other.

Snapping the door shut, Jim tosses the reports onto the sink and scoops Mac’s hair into his hands.

“It looks like el-Sisi’s coalition has declared the Chief Justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour, interim president,” he says over the sound of Mac retching, leaning over to read the wire report on the top of the pile. “Morsi is under house arrest, as are several other high-ranking officials of the Muslim Brotherhood. Are we gonna run with this as a revolution or a coup d’etat?”

Groaning, Mac tries to catch her breath. “Too early to tell. Has el-Tayeb made a statement yet?”

Jim fits all of her hair into the palm of one hand, flipping through the reports with the other. “Not yet. El-Baradei has, though.” Humming anxiously, he keeps turning the pages. “This one says that Morsi’s assistant, Yahya Hamed, is saying that the Republic Guards are staying neutral, but allowed Army Commandos to take Morsi, who offered no resistance.”

She nods.

“Wait, wait, he made a statement. So did the Coptic Pope. Both are in favor of the military intervention.”

Mac sighs. “Revolution. We’ll run it as a revolution, unless Will pushes back.”

“Do you think he will?”

Bitterly, she laughs. “Not if he doesn’t want to sleep on the couch tonight. Can you hand me my toothbrush?”

Nervously letting go of her hair, he edges over to the medicine cabinet over the sink and pulls out the toothbrush Mac’s had stashed in there since the morning sickness started. He sweeps the reports out of the sink, wets the toothbrush, and puts a minuscule (too much and he knows she’ll just start dry-heaving, and Mac is having enough of a tough time already) amount of toothpaste on it before passing it down to her.

While he’s doing that, Mac also reaches up for the stack of papers and he hands them to her. As she's leafing through them, Jim swears he hears her mutter “It’s only his baby,” a time or two. Snorting, he watches her brush her teeth while using the toilet seat as a desk, squinting at the tiny print in the absence of her glasses.

She spits into the bowl, blindly reaching up for the cup of water she knows he has in hand.

(Only very occasionally does Jim worry about how well-trained Mac has him.

Today is definitely not one of those occasions.)

Mac is still sitting on the floor in front of the toilet when the bathroom door opens, and she gives Will (Jim hopes Will is the only one who opens the door to Mac’s bathroom without knocking) sight-unseen an ironically cheery wave.

“You okay sweetheart?” Will asks, sounding distinctly guilty. Focused intently on Mac, who is intent on ignoring her husband for the moment, it takes Will a second to realize Jim is also standing there. “Oh, hey. Um, thanks.”

“It’s me you should be thanking, you jackass,” Mac grouses.

Jim conceals his amusement in a nervous smile. “Just uh, returning the favor.” Sometimes one can’t always get to the designated puke corner of the cave in time. “War on other fronts, so to speak. But, since you’re here — see you at the rundown in fifteen minutes?”

He pats Will on the shoulder on his way out.

(After all, it is _his_ baby.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
